Casual Observations… Conditioning Fear

In my early childhood, living in Köln, Germany, the school I was attending made all of it’s students go to a Catholic church. Mass was a semi-compulsory class. It was in a massive cathedral, an old one, and as traditional, both in construction, and in the way worship was conducted, as you could get. At that age I was already absolutely confused at the concept of religion. I couldn’t get past the gratuitous amount of hate and fear intended on generating submission to a deity that was supposedly a “father”, and put up an enormously stubborn fight with the priest(s), arguing their point of view, and insisting not to pray during mass. The later left me as the only kid sitting while everyone and everything was kneeling during the semi-compulsory prayer session.
To me religion seemed very punishment and fear oriented, something I see just as strongly in the popular science and media of today. Seems to me that as soon as a “good idea” is turned into a “religion”, and this can also apply to science where it’s followers are just as pragmatic as any priest, the “good” in the idea dies. If knowledge and enlightenment empower an individual, shouldn’t it be kept on an individual level and not in an environment where an individual relies on experts and superiors to tell him how to think (for example, “it’s to big for me to understand.”)? How is self-discovery possible if you take the “self” out of it? And how is discovery possible if we dismiss perfectly credible ideas and concepts based on an individuals lack of credentials in a certain field? If science is the quest for knowledge, how can one find knowledge if they search believing that they know?
Compartmentalization, although having its virtues, seems to have become so ingrained in an individuals thinking that it appears to be crippling us on so many levels (science, art, health, belief, ect). It seems as if civilized man has reached his climax where he cannot climb any higher, or, better yet, refuses to climb. As a culture, we function like a group of people that are trying to solve a jigsaw puzzle by memorizing the shape of their piece, and their piece only, instead of taking into regard how their piece fits into the bigger picture, let alone rarely regarding the bigger picture at all.
I theorize that this thinking is so ingrained in us because we never really learned how to think on our own or come to grips with ourselves or what “self” is. Group thinking is easier. A weak individual will eventually go crazy if left to themselves for too long, and the weaker the individual the faster this happens.
Weakness seems to be a great marketing exploit. If a person is weak then any company can run amok and invest in the next generation of experts that will support the interest of that company. These expert will help form the thinking of consumers who believe the experts. If a few knowledgeable individuals, that are critical free thinkers, point out the folly in the actions of the company the company (having now become “market”) can rally its slew of experts and turn all consumers against those individuals. Any one stepping out of line will be pounded into silence by the group afraid of differentiating from popular “truths” established in the spirit of economic interest. The only thing that would bring change to such a system is a consumer revolution. By buying a product the consumer supports movements, policies, and philosophies. If there where no market interest, it would not exist. The only reason something exists is because of market interest. Fear and ignorance is what sustains the detrimental ones.
The internet seems to be the greatest remedy against this as people can, if they wish, become experts on their own. Television is a great medium for recycling, enhancing, and pushing stupidity because it is a push medium, but there is nothing to push when a person has a choice. It’s easy to attack a platform like the web since absolutely everything is available, even the stuff you don’t want to see, and most people react in shock that they are seeing something “like that”, then blame the deteriorating state of the youth for it. I’m assuming that this is the case for people who never learned to critically think because of their reliance on a leader to tell them what to make of it. They appear unable to sort out the good for the bad and are intimidated or frightened when they are presented with something they where taught is “bad”. Although I’m assuming that this is desirable since there is more money to be had off someone that has a desire to follow in contrast to someone that is independent and doesn’t need to buy to feel good about life.
Later in my adult life I was invited to a friends wedding, which was a Catholic one. Sitting through the ceremony I noticed a kid a row down looking at the ceiling. The ceiling was painted with the typical martyrdom gore, namely the crucifixion. It depicted all the various stages. The kid was widemouthed and staring at it in utter horror and disbelief, as if this was the very first time he grasped the concept of murder. It was obvious he was new to this. Such a reaction of shock could well reflect that of an individual not conditioned into embracing these widely accepted concepts as “normal” or “good”. I thought it interesting that all the older art found in ruins throughout the world of spearing, beheading, human sacrifice, cannibalism, ect, probably reflected the completely normal religious beliefs of that time (established norm taken for a good thing), and if our descendants dug up ruins of a catholic church from today that they might have the same outlook on us as we do our own ancestors. Would they regard our sciences and medicine the same? Considering the slew of modern plagues that we regard as normal and natural (cancers, obesity, birth-defects, heart attacks), and especially the irreparable damage to the environment that we left for them to live in, would they look back at us and call this the dark ages?